“And then I was alone. One-handed, wearing the clothes of my dead men, stumbling over their corpses to try to find someone left alive.”
Little with the chains in his face, the metal pulling on frozen yet still-delicate skin, dying in his arms. The leg in the pot. The men huddled in the tent. The sick left at Rescue Camp, Thomas Jopson’s corpse on the ground clawing desperately towards the path in front of him. Magnus Manson, devoured, John Diggle, mauled, Solomon Tozer, devoured, George Hodgson, devoured, Cornelius Hickey, torn apart after cutting out his own tongue. Harry Goodsir butchered and eaten, Thomas Hartnell shot, Thomas Blanky —-
The most macabre of muster rolls, the fate of each man.
“Thomas Jopson, William Gibson, and Harry Goodsir are aware that they’ll die,” he adds gruffly. His eyes are bright again, but he blinks the tears back because whatever he has left in him to cry is done when alone. “Edward Little and Cornelius Hickey don’t. I…don’t have any right to ask you favors, but please…”
He trails off, fighting with himself over what he wants to ask.
“Please don’t tell any of the others. How they lived and how they died are their stories to tell.”
no subject
Little with the chains in his face, the metal pulling on frozen yet still-delicate skin, dying in his arms. The leg in the pot. The men huddled in the tent. The sick left at Rescue Camp, Thomas Jopson’s corpse on the ground clawing desperately towards the path in front of him. Magnus Manson, devoured, John Diggle, mauled, Solomon Tozer, devoured, George Hodgson, devoured, Cornelius Hickey, torn apart after cutting out his own tongue. Harry Goodsir butchered and eaten, Thomas Hartnell shot, Thomas Blanky —-
The most macabre of muster rolls, the fate of each man.
“Thomas Jopson, William Gibson, and Harry Goodsir are aware that they’ll die,” he adds gruffly. His eyes are bright again, but he blinks the tears back because whatever he has left in him to cry is done when alone. “Edward Little and Cornelius Hickey don’t. I…don’t have any right to ask you favors, but please…”
He trails off, fighting with himself over what he wants to ask.
“Please don’t tell any of the others. How they lived and how they died are their stories to tell.”